Igor Girkin

Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin (17 December 1970-), also known as Igor Strelkov, was the Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic from 16 May to 14 August 2014, preceding Vladimir Kononov.

Biography
Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin was born on 17 December 1970 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, in the Soviet Union. He joined the Russian reserves in 1992 and became a hardline ultranationalist, expressing views on eliminating perceived enemies of Russia. He fought in the Transnistrian War on the Russia-backed Transnistria side, served as a volunteer in the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War (during which he took part in the massacre of thousands at Visegrad in 1992), and was a contractor during the First Chechen War. From 1996 to March 2013, he served in the FSB, and rose to the rank of Colonel.

During the Ukrainian Civil War, Girkin took part in the struggle against the government of Ukraine alongside the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) insurgents, backed by the Russian government, and on 12 April 2014 he led the seizing of public offices in Sloviansk. 2/3rds of his men were Ukrainian citizens and many of them were veterans of the Russian Army in Chechnya. On 17 April he ordered the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Ukrainian politician Volodymyr Rybak, and on 27 April, he was given controll of all separatist fighters in the Donetsk region.

On 4 July 2014, he fled Sloviansk as the city fell into Ukrainian hands after the long Siege of Sloviansk, and he was criticized for "surrendering" the city. Sergey Kurginyan, Vladislav Surkov, and Alexander Khodakovsky criticized him for for the surrender, with Kurginyan saying that the surrender was a war crime and Khodakovsky threatening a mutiny. On 14 August 2014 he gave up control of the DPR military, but some claimed that he was given the larger task of organizing a military for all of Novorossiya.